Lowe sentenced to death for second time in Sebastian murder

JUAN DALE BROWN/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS
Rodney Lowe, left, talks with attorney Tom Garland on Friday afternoon in the Indian River County Courthouse in Vero Beach after the jury unanimously decided he should stay on death row for the July 3, 1990 first-degree murder of Donna Burnell in Sebastian.

SCRIPPS TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS

VERO BEACH — It took an Indian River County jury about two hours Friday to return a unanimous vote recommending that convicted killer Rodney Lowe be sentenced to death for the 1990 murder of store clerk Donna Burnell.

Lowe, 41, remained still and offered no reaction when it was announced all 12 jurors recommended he be returned to death row for the July 3, 1990 first-degree murder of Burnell at the Nu-Pack Market on County Road 512 in Sebastian.

"It has been an extraordinary difficult time for Donna Burnell's family; they went through this 21 years ago and they've had to relive this now," Assistant State Attorney Ryan Butler said after court, who prosecuted Lowe's case with Assistant State Attorney Nikki Robinson.

"It's very difficult to retry a case after 21 years," he added. "This was a heinous crime and he didn't show Donna Burnell any mercy, and we feel like the jury made the right decision."Lowe spent 14 years on Florida's death row after being convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1991.

The state Supreme Court in 2008 ordered he be resentenced after upholding a court order issued in 2005 that ruled a new jury should decide whether Lowe should serve life in prison, without the possibility of release for 25 years, or receive a lethal injection.

The high court ruled that evidence presented since Lowe's 1991 conviction indicated he might not have acted alone.

This week, jurors heard three claims of who killed Burnell, but prosecutors insisted Lowe acted alone and rejected defense testimony that the shooter could have been one of two accomplices Lowe claimed were with him that day.

When the verdict was announced, Lowe's family, his mother Sherrion Lowe and a brother and sister, left court immediately and made no comments.

Lowe's attorneys Thomas Garland and Jeffrey Smith appeared disappointed the jury declined to recommend a life prison term.

Making the case more difficult, Garland said, were Florida's 1990 sentencing laws that permitted a prisoner serving a life term to be eligible for release after 25 years.

"It's pretty plain to see from jury selection that the jurors were calculating how long he had been in prison," Garland said. "They knew he'd been there since 1990 and that he could be eligible for parole. We weren't allowed to argue that the possibility for release was slim and none. But we did the best we could."

Donna Burnell's daughters Linda and Paula Burnell hugged family members and appeared relieved.

Outside court, Linda Burnell said the jury gave her mother justice.

She said her mother didn't believe in the death penalty, but was "happy that everyone saw that her life wasn't nothing."

"Sometimes it was hard, I didn't know any of the evidence, really, from the (1990) trial," she said. "But now I have the knowledge that I never had."She said she'll return to Massachusetts "with a little bit of closure," something that's eluded her for two decades.